"We think 'Razor' provides a great new view-engine option that is streamlined for code-focused templating. It [features] a coding workflow that is fast, expressive and fun. Its syntax is compact and reduces typing -- while at the same time improving the overall readability of your markup and code. It will be shipping as a built-in view engine with the next release of ASP.Net MVC (Model View Controller)," Guthrie said.

Design goals for Razor including compactness, expressiveness, and fluidity, in which Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes in a file and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow.

Microsoft intends for Razor to be easy to learn and to work with any text editor. Microsoft also is pondering how Razor could enable development of re-usable HTML helpers using a more declarative approach. Razor is designed to provide a rich code editing experience within the Visual Studio IDE.

"We will provide full HTML, JavaScript, and C#/VB code Intellisense within Razor-based files," said Guthrie.

But Razor will not feature a new imperative language.

"Instead we wanted to enable developers to use their existing C#/VB (or other) language skills with Razor, and deliver a template markup syntax that enables an awesome HTML construction workflow with your language of choice," Guthrie said.

In other application development news, Microsoft announced on Tuesday general availability of its Silverlight rich Internet plug-in technology for the Symbian mobile phone platform.

"We are very pleased to announce the general availability of Silverlight for Symbian. This brings the Silverlight experience to the 20+ million users of Nokia S60 5th edition Nokia 5800 XPressMusic and Nokia N97 devices," the company said in a blog post.